Movie City News Archive for June, 2018

Friday Box Office Estimates

Sicario: Day of the Soldado and Uncle Drew arrive, each floating around the $20 million mark for the weekend. If they can triple that, both will be legit successes. Anything more will be gravy. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom falls as expected, Friday-to-Friday. Leave No Trace and Three Identical Strangers open per-screen strong.

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The DVD Wrapup: Acrimony, Sheikh Jackson, El Sur, Endless, Back to Burgundy, Hamlet, Mimic, M:I 4K, Addiction, Vigil … More

To say that Melinda, Taraji P. Henson and Ajiona Alexus’s character in Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, has rage issues is like comparing the lava pouring from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano to the acid reflux one experiences after eating too much pizza. Both burn, but only one of them destroys everything in its path.

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The DVD Wrapup: Acrimony, Sheikh Jackson, El Sur, Endless, Back to Burgundy, Hamlet, Mimic, M:I 4K, Addiction, Vigil … More

Tyler Perry’s Acrimony: Blu-ray To say that Melinda, Taraji P. Henson and Ajiona Alexus’s character in Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, has rage issues is like comparing the lava pouring from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano to the acid reflux one experiences after eating too much pizza. Both burn, but only one of them destroys everything in its path….

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The Weekend Report

The domestic debut of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom debuted at the top of the charts with an estimated $149.8 million. It was the only new national release because the industry is well aware that you don’t mess with dinos whether they happen to be called Rex or Raptor. It ranks as its studio’s second biggest bow ever behind, unsurprisingly, Jurassic World.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom breaks the all-time record for most $125 million openings in the first 7 months of the year, a success which is reasonably followed by the question of whether there will be any more such openings this year. The record is 6 in one year – 2016 – which included an August and a December release. Meanwhile, the mid-week July 4 holiday is not a friend to JW2… because there is no 3-day or 4-day weekend and the holiday bump (last seen in 2012) is minor at best. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t help much. Strong Friday-to-Friday hold for Incredibles 2 after its massive open last weekend. The King joins Won’t You Be My Neighbor in the 10K per-screeen doc club.

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The DVD Wrapup: Double Lover, Death of Stalin, Flower, Hooked, Alex & Me, Guilty Men, Night of Lepus, Greaser’s Palace, Man in Orange Shirt … More

Double Lover is as different François Ozon’s previous period drama, Franz, as noon is to midnight. The same could be said about most of the movies in Ozon’s credits.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

Incredibles 2*|71.4|4410|NEW|71.4 Ocean’s 8|5.9|4145|-62%|65.5 Tag|5.4|3382|NEW|5.4 Solo: A Star Wars Story|2.3|3182|-44%|186.1 Deadpool 2|2.3|3212|-40%|288.2 Hereditary|2.2|2998|-57%|22.3 Superfly|1.8|2220|NEW|4 Avengers: Infinity War|1.4|2164|-24%|660.3 Adrift|0.65|1929|-57%|25.4 Gotti|0.6|503|NEW|0.6 |||| * includes previews|||| |||| |||| Also Debuting|||| Race 3|0.59|313|| Sammohanam|0.1|121|| Naa Nuvve|15,100|118|| Eating Animals|12,200|2|| 7 Din Mohabbat In|8,900|31|| Outez-moi d’un doute|2,900|11|| Five Seasons: Gardens of Piet Oudolf|2,200|4|| The Yellow Birds|2,000|14|| The Year of Spectacular Men|1,800|11||…

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The Weekend Report

Cinelicious Truly living up to its name Incredibles 2 opened to record-breaking returns estimated at $180.1 million. The animated yarn accounted for about two-thirds of all tickets sold for the frame. Still two other new films attempted a bit of counter-programming with the droll Tag succeeding in grabbing a niche with $14.4 million in third…

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The Weekend Report

Incredibles 2 opened to a record-breaking estimated $180.1 million. The animated adventure accounted for about two-thirds of all tickets sold. Two other films attempted counterprogramming with Tag grabbing a niche with $14.4 million in third while Superfly took only $6.2 million.

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The Weekend Report

Cinelicious Truly living up to its name Incredibles 2 opened to record-breaking returns estimated at $180.1 million. The animated yarn accounted for about two-thirds of all tickets sold for the frame. Still two other new films attempted a bit of counter-programming with the droll Tag succeeding in grabbing a niche with $14.4 million in third…

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Friday Estimates

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The DVD Wrapup: Loveless, In Syria, Good Postman, Inflame, Ordinary Man, I Called Him Morgan, Jerry Lewis, Will & Grace … More

In the Oscar-nominated Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev and co-writer Oleg Negin have crafted a different sort of missing-child story, set among atypically middle-class Muscovites, whose concepts of family and status are far from traditional. Their previous collaborations – Elena, The Banishment and Leviathan – have also required that we look to the east through a different prism. None of Zvyagintsev’s films have been particularly easy to watch, from an emotional point of view. If they present life stripped of contrivances and narrative shortcuts, it’s still the human condition that drives the stories and is never far from their surface.

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“We want to maintain the level of excellence. At the same time, we do want to widen the aperture a little bit.”

“We want to maintain the level of excellence. At the same time, we do want to widen the aperture a little bit.”

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Behind New Amazon Studios Movie Strategy

Behind New Amazon Studios Movie Strategy  Longtime Chief Creative at DC Entertainment Steps Down

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Toni Collette: ‘I don’t like horror films – I’m too petrified’

Toni Collette: “I don’t like horror films – I’m too petrified”

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De Niro Curses!

De Niro Curses! 

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Oleg Sentsov

Our solidarity can save his life.Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg #Sentsov is imprisoned in Siberia for 20 years. Today is the 24th day of his indefinite hunger strike for the release of 64 Ukrainian political prisoners.https://t.co/iP468zYw9L — Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) June 8, 2018

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Danny Kirwan, 68, Former Fleetwood Mac Guitarist and Songwriter

Danny Kirwan, 68, Former Fleetwood Mac Guitarist and Songwriter

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Variety Stretches, Yawns, Has a Deep Think, Composes Nearly 1,300-Word Thumbsucker On Hereditary And Tracking Aid CinemaScore

“The bad grade, in this case, raises a question: Why are so many people turning on Hereditary who’d be all too happy to sit through the limb-severing, soundtrack-gonging, ghost-face-in-the-mirror megaplex horror implement of the week? The reason they’ve turned on it, of course, is that it’s not the horror implement of the week.” Variety Stretches, Yawns, Has…

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“Overnight Success Takes a Long Time to Happen,” Writes Lorna Tucker, Director of Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist

“Overnight Success Takes a Long Time to Happen,” Writes Lorna Tucker, Director of Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist

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Movie City News

“I don’t think it’s cruel to say this, because John himself would undoubtedly have turned it into a gleeful anecdote: When he had the stroke that killed him, he was at a local dinner theater. Hell of a review.”

“I am inclined to aver that every activity needs its critics, from narcissists bloviating in Washington to exhibitors of knee holes in their blue jeans by way of following a fad. So, too, tennis players and others wearing their caps backward. There is, to be sure, only fairly innocuous folly in puncturing pants or reversing caps, but for political or artistic or religious twisting of thought or harboring holes in the head there is rather less excuse. I have always inveighed against the bleary journalism practiced by newspaper reviewers, as opposed to the real criticism performed by, well, critics.”

“I often felt a twinge of grief at the idea that John Simon had devoted his life to a method of work that could only make him increasingly unhappy. Here was a man, elegant, articulate, and vastly knowledgeable, fluent in at least half a dozen languages, whose gifts of mind gave nothing back to the arts he wrote about except a few unkind remarks that made fun of someone’s performance, ethnicity, physical attributes, or, with a pun, on his target’s name. (“If this is Norman Wisdom, I’ll take Saxon folly.”) Other theatre critics keep such darts in their rucksacks for occasional use; John lived by them.”

“One person’s critic is another person’s crackpot. That they are not united in their opinions is ascribable to the Latin saying: quot homines, tot sententiae. I myself prefer being considered a creep, but that is what you get for having what Vladimir Nabokov called ‘Strong Opinions.’ It is odd that in a country so wallowing in negativity, starting with mass shootings and climaxing with Trump, such an unimportant matter as theater criticism should generate so much hostility. The only target patently more important is lead in the drinking water.”

Review: Little Women (no spoilers)

The DVD Wrapup: Cold War, Betty Blue, Official Secrets, Demons, Olivia, American Dreamer, Land of Yik Yak

20 Weeks To Oscar: Cinema, Trump, and Oscar

E. Scott Weinberg On Youthful Fangoria Encounters

Rome Bookstore Closes

With a Grauniad-Alleged $300 Million Budget, Could The Yet-Unseen But Surely Weird Cats Pass A Billion Dollars at The Box Office?

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon